Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The Kremlin’s annual assault on Ukraine’s power grid used to arrive with the first frost. This year it came before the leaves had turned.
Russia has launched its 2026-2027 winter campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure weeks ahead of its usual timing, and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that is the point.
In its October 4 assessment, the Washington-based research group concluded that Moscow is racing to hit the power system before Kyiv can field new defenses against Russia’s ballistic missiles and jet-powered attack drones.
The strike campaign resumed in late September, before the heating season had begun. ISW analysts write that Russia is “likely beginning its campaign earlier than usual before Ukraine can scale up effective means of countering Russian ballistic missiles” and the new, faster drone variants.
A changed theory of victory
According to the assessment, Ukraine’s battlefield results in 2026 have pushed the Kremlin to abandon its reliance on territorial gains. Instead, ISW writes, Ukraine’s successes are “forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to reevaluate his original theory of victory in Ukraine and shift focus to compelling Ukraine to surrender through the winter 2026-2027 long-range strike campaign, as opposed to advances on the battlefield.”
The purpose, the analysts say, is coercion through civilian suffering: the campaign “aims to make civilian life in Ukraine unbearable such that Ukraine will capitulate to Russia’s demands.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on October 4 that it was intensifying attacks on Kyiv and the country at large, framing the escalation as retaliation for alleged Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian targets since June 2026. ISW describes those claims as unsubstantiated.
The scale so far
Between September 27 and October 4, Russian forces fired more than 1,900 attack drones, roughly 800 of them jet-powered, along with about 1,700 aerial bombs and 25 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an update according to Ukrainska Pravda.
The heaviest single wave came overnight into September 30, when Russia fired 188 drones alongside Iskander-M, S-400, Zircon, and Oniks missiles, killing at least seven people and striking locations across 11 regions, according to SOFX.
Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo imposed emergency power cuts in Kyiv and three surrounding regions, the first such measure in the capital since spring.
Ukraine downs roughly 90 percent of slower propeller drones, but effectiveness against the jet-powered variants is “markedly lower,” Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat has said, according to SOFX.
On October 4, a Russian drone strike on an energy facility in Poltava Oblast left about 22,000 consumers without electricity, according to Kyiv Independent, following a similar hit two days earlier that cut power to around 6,000 people in the same region.
Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi has ordered local authorities to check backup power at critical facilities and speed up remaining installations, and Ukraine has set new interceptor production targets for October, according to SOFX.
